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Is Your Finance Department Ready For The Digital Age?

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When I think of cutting edge technology and exciting new products, it’s seldom that the finance function comes to my mind. Compared to other departments like HR and marketing, finance lags behind, seemingly happy to remain technologically adverse.

Whereas in the past the cloud was thought of as a back-up system, it’s now a sophisticated tool that promotes the streamlining of information and universal access.

The cloud has the capacity to bring so much to the finance function, but yet many finance professionals remain unconvinced. The reasons for this aren’t so much grounded in logic, but an unwillingness to change. It’s not uncommon for senior finance individuals to be late on in their careers and established in their ways of working, promoting rigidity that lacks the ability to be adaptable.

But there’s a new breed of finance professional breaking into the function now. With strategy often their primary focus, enabling the cloud gives them much more scope to be agile and responsive to market trends. The use of disparate systems that rely on manual processing often sees finance departments operating at far below their optimal level. A Deloitte report stated that nearly 50% of all CFOs don’t think that their IT systems are up to the job.

Embracing the cloud will make financial management systems far more efficient. It will improve accuracy and automate processes that were once done manually. When put together, finance departments not only profit from accuracy, but also from speed and productivity.

There is no doubt that the finance function has taken steps to improve its digital capabilities, but there is definitely ground to still make up. Not looking at the cloud as a viable move going forward is as good as giving your competitors a leg up. CFOs need to be intertwined with their company’s strategy and embracing digital is the only way they can do this.

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